Skip to main content

Citigroup fires employee who ran popular QAnon conspiracy theory website

QAnon phones
Supporters of President Donald Trump hold up their phones with messages referring to the QAnon conspiracy theory at a campaign rally at Las Vegas Convention Center on February 21, 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images

  • Citigroup has fired an employee who ran a website dedicated to QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory alleging that President Donald Trump is fighting a cabal of human traffickers. 
  • Jason Gelinas, a New Jersey employee of the company, was previously put on paid leave when Logically.ai reported that he operated QMap.pub, a main aggregator of "Q drops," the messages that are the foundation of the conspiracy theory. 
  • Gelinas' QAnon website earned 10 million monthly visitors, according to the analytics firm SimilarWeb.  
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Citigroup has fired an employee who ran a popular website dedicated to the QAnon conspiracy theory, Bloomberg News first reported on Tuesday. 

Jason Gelinas, a New Jersey man who worked at Citigroup as an information technology specialist, operated the website QMap.pub, which recently earned 10 million average monthly views, according to data from SimilarWeb, a digital analytics firm. 

A spokesperson for Citigroup told Insider, "Mr. Gelinas is no longer employed by Citi. Our code of conduct includes specific policies that employees are required to adhere to, and when breaches are identified, the firm takes action."

QAnon — the baseless far-right conspiracy theory that claims President Donald Trump is secretly fighting a "deep state" cabal of satanic pedophiles — is based on cryptic messages left by an anonymous figure called "Q" on 8kun, an anonymous message board formerly known as 8chan. 

Gelinas had previously been put on paid leave after the fact-checking website Logically.ai reported his ties to QAnon on September 10. The website was taken down soon after the publication of the Logically.ai report. 

It's also possible that Gelinas had ties to 8kun, as the two websites shared an IP address, according to research by Fredrick Brennan, the founder of 8chan. 

QMap.pub aggregated "Q drops," or the anonymous posts by "Q," and spread the conspiracy theory's misinformation to millions of people. SimilarWeb data shows that the website brought troves of viewers to 8kun. 54 percent of 8kun's August traffic came from Gelinas' website, according to the firm.  

Gelinas did not respond to requests for comment. When reached for comment by Bloomberg News regarding his connection to QMap.pub, he said that he wanted to "stay out of it." 

The rapid spread of QAnon, which social-media companies are struggling to tamp down, comes as the conspiracy theory continues to be linked to violence and crimes, including kidnapping. 

Read the original article on Business Insider


Udimi - Buy Solo Ads from Business Insider https://ift.tt/34zPgj6
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

9 VCs in Madrid and Barcelona discuss the COVID-19 era and look to the future

Spain’s startup ecosystem has two main hubs: Madrid and Barcelona. Most observers place Barcelona first and Madrid second, but the gap appears to close every year. Barcelona has benefitted from attracting expats in search of sun, beach and lifestyle who tend to produce more internationally minded startups. Madrid’s startups have predominantly been Spain or Latin America-focused, but have become increasingly international in nature. Although not part of this survey, we expect Valencia to join next year, as city authorities have been going all-out to attract entrepreneurs and investors. The overall Spanish ecosystem is generally less mature than those in the U.K., France, Sweden and Germany, but it has been improving at a fast clip. More recently, entrepreneurs in Spain have moved away from emulating success in pursuit of innovative technologies. Following the financial crisis, the Spanish government supported the creation of startups with the launch of FOND-ICO GLOBAL, a €1.5 billi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Emulating USB Dongle – Introducing HASP Dongle Emulator Software

Information Technology Blog - - Emulating USB Dongle – Introducing HASP Dongle Emulator Software - Information Technology Blog Over the years the methods used by software developers and producers to limit the amount of users to a specific number in a licensing agreement have become more complex.  The aim of copy protection is to protect the intellectual rights and financial investment of the individual developers and manufacturing companies.   A way of getting around this protection is to reproduce the media through which you can deliver the application to other users,  meaning that the software can be replicated far in excess of that specified in the license. One of the most common methods has been to use hardware keys or dongles which will enable the user to activate an application, unlocking its full functionality without using a device.  In addition, it offers good protection against attempts to pirate the software. In this article, we will look at th...
1 comment
Read more